Although digital watermarking has been commercially available for several years, relatively few applications have directly targeted consumers. Traditional applications of digital watermarking such as copy prevention, copyright communication, and broadcast monitoring, involve embedding the watermark at the point of media creation or distribution and detecting the watermark either on a tethered system or a dedicated device. While these usages have utility for consumers, they are primarily of interest to content creators and media distributors.
Modes of digital media consumption are changing, fueled by the emergence of advanced computational and communications capabilities in mobile devices. Electronic media is increasingly being consumed on mobile devices. Consequently, distribution and delivery of media to mobile devices is becoming more relevant. This creates opportunities for new and emerging usage models based on digital watermarking. These usage models are enabled by the ability of digital watermarks to survive digital-to-analog-to-digital (D-A-D) transformations. In these usage models, the digital watermark serves as a link between media being played or displayed, and online content pertinent to that media.
The new usage models create new opportunities for use of digital watermarking by combining watermarking with the capabilities of mobile devices, including mobile phones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs). For example, transient media such as images or video displayed on a screen (e.g. LCD panel) can be watermarked and then detected using a mobile device. Applications based on these usage models can provide richer user experiences and intuitive interfaces by allowing interaction with the media itself. These applications can enable easier distribution and delivery of media on to mobile devices and drive further media consumption.
Usage models linking media content to the Internet using watermarking [1][2] and content-based identification technologies [4] have been proposed earlier. Watermarking usually imparts a content-independent identity to the media, whereas content-based identification technologies (such as digital fingerprinting, media recognition) derive an identity from the content itself. The proliferation of capable mobile devices and mobile media usage has made such models more viable and compelling. This has resulted in emerging applications based on these models. Watermarking offers benefits that can expand the applicability of some of the usage models and enables new ones.
The foregoing are just a few of the features of the technology detailed below.